The Second Sunday of Lent

Preached by The Very Reverend Robert Neske, Dean, at Saint Mark’s Pro-Cathedral, Hastings, February 28, 2010

The public ministry of Jesus is generally divided into two parts, the Galilean period when Jesus activities and those of his disciples took place in an around the area bordering the Sea of Galilee. The second period is the account of Jesus’ long journey up to Jerusalem when he was preparing himself for his coming passion and preparing, or at least trying to prepare the disciples for that day as well.

 Our Gospel comes out of this latter period. Jesus and the twelve are on their way up to Jerusalem and Luke goes out of his way to make sure that his readers understand the necessity of this journey. Jesus is going up to Jerusalem. Jerusalem then as now was more than just a city; it was nothing less than the Center of the World for the Jewish people. While the people of Israel then as now were scattered to ends of the known world, the center of their faith and their life as a people set a part by God was in Jerusalem.

 As the last prophet of Israel as well as the Messiah of the Living God, Jesus destiny is in Jerusalem. This is why Herod sends his messengers to threaten Jesus and tell him to get out of the territory. The last thing Herod needs is another John the Baptist preaching about righteousness, stirring up the people, calling his own behavior into question; yet Jesus is dismissive of the man’s threats: “Go and tell that fox for me, “listen, I am casting out demons and performing cures today and tomorrow, and on the third day I finish my work. Yet today, tomorrow and the next day I must be on my way, because it is impossible for a prophet to be killed outside of Jerusalem.”

 While in modern times the fox is a creature noted for its cunning, in the Israel of Jesus time the fox was considered nothing more than a low form of predator. Jesus is neither impressed nor frightened by this puppet king, who does nothing more than the bidding of Rome. Jesus passion and death will come, and certainly Herod will have his hand in it, but this will not occur in Galilee..

 However what Jesus is saying is that is that he is going to continue doing the work God has called him to do until that work is brought to completion on the third day, which of course has great significance for us as Christians but would have been utterly lost on the Pharisees.

 As it is, Jesus will not be staying long in the Galilee as he says: “Yet today, tomorrow, and the next day I must be on my way, because it is impossible for a prophet to be killed outside of Jerusalem.” This too is an interesting statement because we find when we read the Scriptures, that there were in fact few incidents recorded in the Hebrew Bible where prophets were killed in Jerusalem.  Now it is not that such things did not occur, but the prophets, who were killed in the city, were not the Major and Minor Prophets found in the Old Testament, but charismatic figures who arose in the city at a particular moment in time in response to God’s call, gave their message, and were subsequently stoned for their trouble. While Jeremiah, Isaiah and the others certainly never had an easy time of it and experienced no end of grief, none of them were killed by the mob.

Our Lord’s bold declaration then segues into a lament that is very much reminiscent of the words of the ancient prophets because the impending rejection of Jesus as God’s prophet and Messiah will lead to judgment for the people of God and upon God’s chosen nation. Jesus then speaks words of lamentation over the city that will shortly reject him: “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! See, your house is left to you. And I tell you, you will not see me until the time comes when you say, 'Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.”

Our Lord’s lament ends with the words from the 118^th Psalm that we will hear on Palm Sunday: And I tell you, you will not see me until the time comes when you say, 'Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.” If the people of God would only accept the Messiah and the love God revealed to us in Jesus’ coming, it might have all been different, but then people are just not that way, not then and not now.

 Our Gospel lesson is one of the passages from the Scripture that seriously makes you wonder what on earth the people on the committee for the Revised Common Lectionary were thinking. They were probably thinking about the ‘prophesy’ bit. At some point in the last two decades being “prophetic’ became fashionable in the old mainline churches. Unfortunately this has often taken the form of preachers great and small, acting like television pundits offering their personal politics in place of the Word of God and/or the Gospel of Christ. We have a good number of bishops in the Episcopal Church who seem to think they are prophetic when all they are really doing is running their mouths. What these preachers great and small forget and have forgotten is that God calls and appoints prophets these are not self-appointing positions; you see when a really prophet speaks they begin with the words: “Thus says the LORD. It is the Lord not ourselves that we have been called to proclaim.

As Paul reminds us in his second letter to the people of Corinth: “It is not ourselves that we proclaim; we proclaim Christ Jesus as Lord and ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake” this is the work of the Church and the work of its ministers, bishop, priest, deacon or laity.

Which means that the work of God will go on as will the need for the Church to proclaim the Good News of God in Christ Jesus reconciling the world, because the “today, tomorrow and the next day is given to us to be about this work. For unlike our Lord our work will not be finished until the Lord comes again, and we say: 'Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.”